'Keeping calm': US stocks rise despite ongoing war in Iran

The main U.S. stock indices began trading on Tuesday, March 17, with a slight increase. Investors are assessing the impact of the conflict in the Middle East on energy prices, as well as inflation risks ahead of the two-day meeting of the Federal Reserve System, which will begin on March 18, writes Reuters.

- Broad index of American shares S&P 500 on this background added in the first minutes of the trading session 0.7%, the same amount of growth of technological Nasdaq Composite, the index of "blue chips" Dow Jones in the plus by 0.95%.

- The "fear on Wall Street" index, VIX, fell 6% to 22 points, although it had been above 30 points as recently as last week (any value above 20 indicates market volatility).

- Brent oil is trading at $101.87 per barrel (up 1.6% from the previous close). Futures for WTI with delivery in April added 1.34% and cost $94.7.

U.S. stocks went into the green zone thanks to the rebound, which the previous day caused the growth of the technology sector, explains Reuters. Against this background, the S&P 500 on March 16 made the largest one-day jump for more than a month - at the end of the session, the index added about 1%. Markets are following the annual conference on AI from Nvidia - at it the head of the company Jensen Huang yesterday said that Nvidia expects: its total revenue from AI chips Blackwell and Vera Rubin will reach at least $1 trillion by the end of 2027.

"The S&P 500 index, while lagging slightly, is only about 4 percent below its highs reached before the conflict [in the Middle East]," Siebert Financial Chief Investment Officer Mark Malek pointed out (quoted by Bloomberg). - That tells me that the market and investors remain calm," he added. "At the end of the day, U.S. markets still offer the best opportunities for growth, which is definitely tempering at least some of the concerns," Malek noted.

Israel on March 17 announced the assassination of Iranian Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani in the war in the Middle East, marking another round of escalation of the conflict with Iran, Bloomberg notes. This followed Tehran's intensification of strikes against targets in the Persian Gulf countries. In particular, on March 17 - for the first time since the war began in late February - Iranian forces attacked a major gas field in the UAE with a drone; and the day before and over the weekend, struck the UAE's key oil port, Fujairah, forcing it to suspend operations.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor